Capacity Building and Training Needs for Community Health Workers Working in Health Care Organizations

Caitlin G Allen, Nell Brownste

Abstract

Members of the community health worker (CHW) workforce have new opportunities to work within the health care system. These opportunities come with questions and challenges about the roles CHWs can play and their specific capacity building and training needs. We use a mixed methods approach including a cross sectional survey of 265 CHWs and qualitative interviews with a sub-set of survey respondents (n=23) to gather perspectives from CHWs about workforce capacity building needs for CHWs working within transformative health care organizations. Eighty percent of CHWs agreed or strongly agreed that they feel well trained to carry out their duties as CHWs. CHWs ranked communication, advocacy, assurance of services, and culturally competent services as priority roles. In addition, creating a learning environment for CHWs working in health care settings is essential to support capacity building for CHWs. Understanding training needs for CHWs can help improve the relationship and understanding between CHWs and other care team members. Capacity building efforts through appropriate training and supervision of CHWs assists with CHW integration and enhances the fidelity of information CHWs deliver to patients.